All of Rome’s provinces, from Britannia on the shores of the frozen North Sea, to Arabia swept by sun-drenched sands of the desert, were unique. But Greece, the Province of Achaea, was unique in a special way. Hellas, after all, was the shining font of Mediterranean civilization when Rome was a rustic town on the Tiber, and along with the even more exotic East, remained its mentor and model for centuries to come. Throughout the sixth and fifth centuries bce, when the Italian peninsula emerged as a constellation of hard-working and modest farmers’ towns, Greece was studded with cities of sophisticated urban culture and reasonable political applications of democracy and independence. Simply put, despite justifiable arguments about the importance of Italy and Italic traditions in shaping the fundamentals of the emerging Roman civilization, more than any other external source, the roots of Rome’s art, institutions, literary and urban culture were informed by the Greek or the classical model. Roman architecture, in broad and important ways, was based on the notion and principles of classicism that defined Greek architecture.